


White And Red And Everything In Between

by Kissed_by_Circe



Category: The Tudors (TV), The White Princess (TV), The White Queen (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:00:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kissed_by_Circe/pseuds/Kissed_by_Circe
Summary: His crown will be passed over peacefully, unmarred by the blood of a rival and the dirt of a battlefield.Henry VIII is visited by his late aunt’s ghost, who tells him something about the future.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 92





	White And Red And Everything In Between

**Author's Note:**

> The family trees of Henry VIII, and Elizabeth of York, and even Catherine of Aragon, are full of boys that died young, while the girls all lived longer. Maybe girls are just a bit more robust than boys, but hey, PG used a curse for her novels, so why not do the same, when we’re both just writing fanfiction?

♛

i.

February 1536

The last time he’d seen her he’d been no more than ten, clinging to his mother’s skirts like a babe, and she’d looked old, a woman past thirty, with silver strands in her hair and wrinkles under her eyes. Now, three and a half decades later, she’s young again, a golden-haired beauty with soft features. At first, he thinks it’s his late lady mother, but then he recognizes her as his aunt, the Viscountess Welles.

He must be drunk, he thinks, to see a woman who passed away when he was naught but a boy, and he’s shocked, for she can only be a ghost, a white lady, ready to drag him to hell, like ghosts do, and he, the king of England and the finest knight in Christendom, hides under the covers like a frightened child, trying to say some prayer. He hopes she’ll be gone by the time he’s finished, but she interrupts the stammered pleas coming from his mouth by calling out his name in a voice as clear as a mountain stream and as sharp as a diamond.

“Hiding under your duvet, I see. I should have known. You’re a coward, just like your father, but I thought that, maybe, a bit of your mother would be in you, too. Seems like I was wrong.” “I am not like my father, milady!” he hisses, now emerging from his bed, scared still but angry now, too.

_How dare she insult him like that, even if she is, indeed, a ghost and not just some nightmare haunting him!_

“Why are you here?” She chuckles, her pale hands smoothing her pale brocade skirts. “My dear nephew… you are so weak. You all are. Men in general, but, somehow, you Plantagenet boys are even weaker than normal ones.” “I. Am. Not. Weak.” he breathes, anger rising in his cheeks, colouring them bright pink. “You’re not, I’ll give you that. But the others, they were.”

Her hands are on her waist now, her nails digging into the embroidered silk like claws, the delicate fingers weighted down by heavy rings of gold and stone and blood. “Edward of Middleham was ten, your brother five-and-ten, your cousin Thomas only twelve. Mary’s sons died, just like them, and none of yours will live to see his seven-and-tenth name day either.” She starts walking, her bone-coloured skirts moving with every step, the hems, soaked in crimson, barely touching the wooden floor. It reminds him of Anne, of her cries, of the bloodied cloths carried from her rooms.

“My brothers were children too, too young to die, and yet they did.” Her face is a mask of bone china, pale and lifeless, but there are sobs hidden in her chest, desperate to break free and wash away her grief, to dull the pain. She weeps now, silently, lets the façade break down for a moment, and turns away from him.

“So, I’ll never have an heir? No one to rule after I am gone?” His comment, full of curiosity and hopelessness, makes her laugh, and she comes over to him, her arms still wrapped around her waist, before she reaches out to touch his face, trace its contours with her fingertips.

“Oh, you’ll never have sons, but you already have daughters, healthy, witty and strong, and they’ll be queens one day, you’ll see.” She looks like his mother, he thinks, but before he can ask her about his sons, or his daughters, she fades away, and he is left with nothing but thin air between his fingers.

ii.

May 1536

Jane looks at him with wide eyes, uncertain of how she ought to react to his decision. How could he send her away when she’d promised him a son and heir, when Anne has proven to be unfit to carry a prince to term, when he all but vowed to make her his wife?

It hadn’t been an easy decision, and had he not been visited by the Lady Cecily, had he did not know about his family’s future, he’d marry her, hoping for a son still, but he won’t do it. He can’t. They’ll never have a healthy son, and he won’t go through a divorce and set Anne aside for some maiden that’s not going to give him a son either.

He has Mary and Elizabeth, and they’ll have to be enough. He’ll groom them to be queens, like their mothers, and he won’t go down in history as the man that divorced two wives in hopes of a son he didn’t get, but as the father of two formidable queens.

iii.

October 1536

She is the eldest, and even if she is a bastard, she is a princess too, and soon enough she’ll be a queen as well. Pressing her into this marriage hadn’t been as easy as he’d thought, but in the end, she signed the act of succession, and he’d reinstalled her as a princess and as the Duchess of York thinking of another York princess reined in with an advantageous marriage. She grumbles, of course, but in the end, she agrees to his terms, for they include a marriage fit for a queen.

Now, she looks as gracious and elegant as her mother had on her wedding day, no longer young and childish. The blush of her plump cheeks and the softness of her former curves have been drained from her, leaving her gaunt and fragile, with sharp edges under pale skin, and yet she is as radiant a girl as could be.

Holding her head high, she walks down the aisle, a river of flaming waves flowing down her back under a crown of enamelled roses and diamonds like a veil of spun gold, her slim fingers not fidgeting with the pearls and blossoms sewn onto the silver brocade of her dress once, and she reminds him so much of her mother that it almost hurts.

Once his aunt had told him of the curse – and he was sure it had to be a curse, something one of his ancestors did, that condemned his family to rarely, if at all, produce healthy sons – he knew he had to prepare one of his daughters for her future as queen of England. It can’t be Mary, who is openly against him, who is a catholic, who is the reason for his break with Rome. Elizabeth is the one he wants on the throne after him, and he’ll make sure she gets there.

Giving Mary to her cousin James Stuart and excluding her from the line of succession is the best he can do for her, for him, for Elizabeth. She’ll be the queen of Scotland, Elizabeth will be the queen of England, and both countries will be united through their children, he hopes.

iv.

November 1536

When Anne becomes pregnant again, he’s both happy and terrified. There’s still a flicker of hope, that desperate craving for a son and heir, the vision of a tall golden-haired prince stepping up to the throne under the cheers of his people, the memory of his own accession, all muted and bathed in soft shades of pink, is still strong in his mind. His crown will be passed over peacefully, unmarred by the blood of a rival and the dirt of a battlefield, and he doesn’t wish for the turmoil a girl-queen and possible pretenders could cause.

But still the fear lingers, and he cannot bear to look at women with golden hair like his mother’s. Anne prays. She kneels in her chapel and before the cross hanging on one of the walls of her chambers until Doctor Butts forbids it, and forces herself to eat everything her maids put before her. She isolates herself from court, only allowing her siblings and cousins and closest friends to enter her chambers, and she sends for Elizabeth to keep her company.

She worries herself sick, scared of what will become of her and her daughter if she fails to deliver a living son. If she doesn’t provide England with a healthy little prince then she’ll be useless, cast aside for another, younger and more beautiful.

Her fear grows, and her frame grows thinner. She loses the child, and a lot of blood. He is merciful, generous even, and she barely believes it when he doesn’t try to get rid of her, one way or another.

v.

February 1541

The queen is a shadow of her former self, no longer slender but haggard, the lines of her delicate face sharper and more pronounced, her dark beauty faded to the blueish hues of exhaustion under her eyes. Her last pregnancy almost kills her, and she doesn’t even have the strength to scream as she pushes her babe into the world, pressing her face into the cushions as she anxiously awaits a sound – any sound – to tell her that it lives.

And then, at last, the child wails, and the queen cries with relief.

Henry is down in the chapel, fingertips grazing the cold stone tiles under which his firstborn son sleeps. In another world, he’d lived. In another world, he’d be a man grown now, with a wife of his own. In another world, he’d kneel beside him, and maybe they’d be praying for his grandchild’s safe birth now. But this isn’t another world, and when Brandon interrupts the silence to announce that he has another daughter, he sighs, and thanks the Lord that the child lives.

vi.

December 1542

When the messenger arrives and tells him that Mary has, at last, _at long last_ , given her husband a son and heir, he doesn’t know what to think. So far, she’s only managed to birth girls – Catherine, Margaret, Elizabeth and Isabella, Mary – but now she’s managed to have a son, alive and healthy and strong as he should be, and Henry cannot help but fear for the child, for surely his grandson must be cursed the way they all are cursed. They name him John, and while Henry wishes that they had named the child after him, he can only hope that prince John won’t meet his granduncle’s fate.

John becomes an orphan and the king of scots at only a week old, and his mother becomes sicker and sicker.

vii.

July 1543

Life bleeds out of Anne once more, and Doctor Butts is quiet when he tells him that the queen won’t survive another pregnancy, that she shouldn’t have any more children. There is fear in her eyes while they listen to the physician, but determination too, and when he tells her that Elizabeth and Cecily are enough, that Mary’s girls and the grandchildren Mary have given him are enough, she relaxes for the first time in years.

viii.

August 1545

The death of Brandon hits him hard. He knew that they were growing old, too old, but he only now realises that his time is nearing, and so he makes plans. Elizabeth marries Louis, a prince-du-sang, who is groomed to become king of England, and their firstborn daughter is to marry John once they come of age. Mary governs Scotland with a strong hand, and his youngest, Cecily, is betrothed to a Swedish prince. Maybe they will unite the world under Tudor rule after all.

ix.

January 1547

Henry dies, and Elizabeth, tall and golden-haired and strong, is crowned while England cheers. She is young, too young, but Anne acts as regent, and who is there to fight her claim? Her older sister, content and busy in the North? His nieces and grandnieces by his sister Mary, whose claim is even weaker than her own? Some distant York relative? No, Elizabeth is the new queen, and she is healthy and able and strong. She’ll have children with her husband soon enough, and until then Cecily will remain unwed and in England as her heir. The future is golden, and his crown secure in the hands of his daughter, far away from the mud and blood of the battlefield.

x.

When the Lady Cecily comes to him this time, she smiles. He smiles back as he takes her hand.

♛


End file.
